


An endless summer afternoon.

by LunnVic



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Blood, Bokuto Koutarou & Kuroo Tetsurou Friendship, Break Up, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt, Im so sorry really, Kuroo Tetsurou & Oikawa Tooru Friendship, M/M, University, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 14:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13929081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunnVic/pseuds/LunnVic
Summary: They looked at each other. Tetsurou wished murder was legal in Japan.“Can you get the hanahaki if you like two people and one likes you in return but the other doesn’t?”, Bokuto asked.“I’m not a scientist, you know”“Stop. Stop!  I don’t… I like Kenma, ok? This is not the hanahaki.”___________Kuroo and Kenma have been together for years. But, suddenly, Kuroo gets the hanahaki disease.





	An endless summer afternoon.

 

 

Summer at its peak felt like honey sliding on his back. It was dense, sticky and kind of humid, and Tetsurou didn’t like it at all. He never knew if he was sweating or just surviving July, and judging by the way the cicadas were singing he was sure they felt the same. The fact that their team was playing the fifth match in a row didn’t help him to feel cleaner. But who felt clean in summer, anyway? Maybe Bokuto. But Bokuto never seemed to care about those things.

“Why are you looking at the clock so much?”, the ace himself asked, raising an eyebrow so up in his face that Tetsurou felt the insane urge to mimic the gesture. He nearly did. “Are you _that_ tired?”

“You wish.”

“So?”, he sounded almost offended, but Tetsurou knew him well. “We’re at match point, Kuroo!”

He knew. Just like he knew that practice match was getting longer than expected, with three sets that twisted his muscles into bubbly jelly and spikes so hard his arms hurt. But he wasn’t anxious about the 24-22 scoreboard, because Oikawa would make sure Bokuto ended it right there, right now. No. He was looking at the clock because he couldn’t wait to get out of the gym and finally seeing Kenma.

Yes, they were still neighbors. Yes, they were still together. And even so, even so…

The whistle set the end of the game with Bokuto’s usual victory shriek and high-fives. Tetsurou smiled, because it was impossible not to get dragged in, but hurried to get in line to show his respect to the opponent and all the other things you do when you win, celebrations included. And when he flew to the club room to get changed, the setter’s eyes were following him. Oikawa knew better than to say anything.

“So, are you going to Kenma’s place now?”, Bokuto asked, with his broad smile and his huge arms and his golden eyes.

Tetsurou nodded while passing his shirt over his head. He needed a shower for sure, and Kenma would _definitely_ tell him so, but he could take it while he was playing the game Tetsurou had bought for him yesterday. Lately it was always like this, little details he left in his hands like the cat bringing a dead bird to its owner. To its owner. But, then again, when hadn’t it been like this?

“Can I come, too?” he yelled. “I miss him! So much! He’s so-not-like you…!”

“Eh? What does that mean?”, Tetsurou replied, twisting his smile into a villain-like grimace and making him laugh so hard he almost felt his skull moving inside at his rhythm.

“Just the truth! Can I go, then?”

“Shouldn’t you go to see Akaashi instead, Bokuto?”, Oikawa intervened, with a sweet and (oddly) sincere smile dancing on his lips.

Tetsurou didn’t want to thank him for the help, but he did it anyways with a light nod. It wasn’t like he didn’t want Bokuto to come along. After all, Bokuto was his best friend and even Kenma enjoyed spending time with him (although he’d always deny it) but… you know. Since he was in university it was as if time was running at his own speed, slow and fast and crazy and Tetsurou still was trying to decode how it worked; how to steal just a few minutes for Kenma and himself.

“Why should I go visit Akaashi?”

Everyone in the room club sighed and Bokuto blinked in confusion. Oikawa looked at him directly in the eyes, raising a brow, and Tetsurou felt nothing but sorry for the current captain of Fukurodani. He wished him patience.

“Because today is International Setters Day”, Oikawa deliberately lied, with tone so perfect it almost convinced Tetsurou. He was elegant even when lying (maybe even more _when_ _lying_ ).

“Is it?” and now Bokuto seemed a little alarmed. “But then we should go out with _you_!”

“Ah, don’t worry, I have a date today.”

“With a pretty girl?”, the ace asked, grinning.

“The prettiest.”

“It doesn’t seem true.” Tetsurou replied, with a smirk, “Since when you let others eclipse you?”

Oikawa raised his chin, pretending to be offended, Bokuto laughing besides him.

“We are matched in beauty.”

“Yeah, sure”.

The setter replied, but Tetsurou didn’t hear him over the sound of his own cough. It was rough and vicious and it scratched his throat, making him bend in two with hands over his mouth. He felt something inside, a strange lump pressing against his Adam’s apple that made him think for a terrifying moment he was going to choke. But Bokuto had the marvelous idea to fucking hit his back with his ace force, and even if it definitely didn’t work at all, the cough left him alone.

“Dude”, he said, as if Tetsurou had been choking on purpose.

“Ew”, Oikawa added, his brown eyes looking at the saliva that had stained his fingers.

“So you _really_ were tired! Are you ok?”

“Arg, yeah”, he replied, voice rusty. “I’ve just had an allergic reaction to nonsense, sorry”.

Far from feeling insulted, Bokuto laughed out loud, pushing him out of the club room now that he was fully clothed (“C’mon, go!”). Oikawa was frowning, but he didn’t say anything, and Tetsurou let himself being dragged to the metro station.

His mouth tasted like grass.

 

 

“Tetsurou, honey!”

Kenma’s mother was tiny and round, and smiled in a way he had never seen in his son. Ringing the doorbell was, at this point, just an act of politeness, as Tetsurou had a copy of the keys since… he couldn’t even remember when. Kenma had the keys to his boyfriend’s house, too, but this time Tetsurou remembered exactly the amount of times he had used them: none.

He didn’t know if she _knew_ either. She kept letting him in, and that’s what mattered.

“Kenma is gonna be so happy! Shoyo is here too!”, she hummed, bright as the sun, “Maybe you two can get him out of here a little bit? It’s summer! Go get some ice-cream!”

Sincerely, Tetsurou doubted that the guy was going to be happy with an overcrowded bedroom and two pairs of eyes on him. And. Shoyo…? Since when the little shrimp went over to Kenma’s house…? What day was it today? Wasn’t he supposed to be training with the rest of the Karasuno team _way far_ from Tokyo?

Tetsurou liked Shoyo. He was lively and got the best out of Kenma, and Tetsurou had only seen him texting to the redhead, not even to him. But they were neighbors, so it wasn’t like he cared about something so trivial… not at all. Yeah, it would be nice receiving a text some days when university was so overwhelming and tiring that he didn’t even have time to visit, but, _well_.

“Hey, kids.”

“Kids”, Kenma deadpanned, raising his eyes to him.

Shoyo yelped, startled, and let the PSP fell from his hands. The game continued playing, happy music coming from it, while the little one overly apologized. Kenma just shook his head, but Tetsurou knew him better, and he could see an invisible smile, that smile that could be only noticed by someone who had grown up together with him.

“You’re early”, he said, picking the PSP up. Shoyo looked at him from behind Kenma, and Tetsurou felt like he was hiding. Maybe he was.

“Well, in fact… I’m kinda late.”

“Are you?”, and he looked away, to Shoyo.

Something was wrong. Tetsurou couldn’t detect right away what it was, but he saw it in the way Kenma’s shoulders were tense. Oh. Maybe Shoyo was being way _too_ intense? It happened sometimes, with Taketora. His energy wasn’t ready for…

“We’re three!”, Shoyo then shouted, eyes radiant like the sun he was. “We can play…! We can do blocking practice!”

Cute. But…

“Yeah, why not?” Wait, what? “What do you say, Kuro?”

“Eh… I don’t mind.”

But he _did_ mind. His legs, his arms, his throat, every centimeter of his body was aching for the long hours in team practice. He wanted to rest, to lie in Kenma’s bed while he was sitting beside him, the soporific music of the game luring him to sleep, sometimes gathering strength just to tell him something stupid that Bokuto had said that week. Sometimes listening to Kenma rant in low voice about things he was only familiar with because of him.

Kenma only wanted to play volleyball when Kuroo was sad. He didn’t know if he was right now, but he forced himself to smile, because a willing to play Kenma was always a good Kenma for him. They would have fun and then Shoyo would come back to his town and maybe (just maybe) Kenma would ask him to stay overnight.

“Yay!”

Kenma smiled. Kenma smiled. Tetsurou couldn’t keep his eyes off it.

“I’ll go to the bathroom first, wait for me!” and he disappeared like a shot bullet.

Silence. Tetsurou smirked, looking at how lazily Kenma was getting up. He consciously ignored him, at least until the boy cut the distance between them and left a brief kiss into his jaw. He leaned over him, looking for his lips, kissing them and feeling him smiling against his.

“Hello”, Kenma finally greeted him with a whisper.

“Hello.”

“Are you staying over tonight? It’s Friday.”

“Only if you want.”

He sighed, Tetsurou trying with all his might to not to touch his hair, fine strands of gold and onyx amid his fingers. Well, more onyx than gold now. Ah, how he had missed the color black on him.

“Let’s see first if Shoyo can make it to the bullet train on time”

Tetsurou pursed his lips.

 

 

Of course, Shoyo only made it on time thanks to Tetsurou.

Now they were lying on Kenma’s bed, unfairly enormous (as it was bigger than Tetsurou’s) and incredibly cozy. The only light still on was from the worm light attached to his old gameboy advance, the one Tetsurou had given him as a birthday present so long ago. And it was really so long ago… they weren’t even together. It was in summer too, the day he had opened his mouth, ready to tell the truth, but Kenma cut him with a sharp “I know. Don’t say it”.

Tetsurou hadn’t wanted to say it in order to get a kiss in return, nothing further from reality, but that was what he got. A brief (almost inexistent) kiss.

And, for five years now, every time he’d tried to say it out loud Kenma had stopped him with his lips. It was like silence was the price to pay and kisses and cuddles and nights awake were the commodity.

But Tetsurou didn’t mind anymore. He had understood that Kenma loved him too but wanted it to be a whispered secret in his ear. He liked to be a secret. He liked that Kenma was his secret. But, over all, he adored having his legs tangled with his, and his lips on his sloppy two-toned hair at 3 in the morning, and listening to the clicking of Kenma’s fingers on his PSP.

 _Is that so?_ , had said his mom after his first day at university, when Tetsurou had replied a sharp “no” to the question of if there were cute girls in his class. She had smiled, nodded and kept cooking. She knew.

Kenma clicked his tongue, eyes in the game.

“What’s wrong?”

“These puzzles… I hate this game.”

“Oh? I thought you wanted it?”

He snorted:

“You know what I mean.”

He knew the laugh was coming, but instead he got a cough. Or, rather, a mixture of both. All his body twisted itself, getting up half laughing half choking, and while Kenma turned to look at him, slightly amused, the mix evolved to a virulent coughing fit that brought tears to his lashes. Kenma got up too, worried, and handed him his eternal glass of water on the nightstand. However, he kept coughing until he could gather a couple of seconds to drink it.

The water seemed to work, relieving his sore throat, and he took a long ( _long_ ) breath of air.

“Are you okay?” Kenma asked, in low voice, almost like a sorry whisper.

“Yes… yes”, he answered, taking his hand to the Adam’s apple. It was there again, the lump, and something else… in his chest. Kenma frowned, but Tetsurou pushed him back to the bed. “Don’t worry.”

“That’s because you laugh like a hyena, you know?”

“Are you saying I choke because my laugh sounds like an animal?”

“Kinda.”

“Go to sleep.”

Surprisingly, he obeyed, but didn’t let go the PSP. Tetsurou looked at him for a little while, at the way the light outlined Kenma’s silhouette, turning his eyes into drops of volcanic lava. Kenma was saying something about not liking to be observed when Tetsurou noticed something inside his mouth, right between teeth and cheek. He pushed it with the tongue, its texture similar to velvet, and then he caught it with the tip of his fingers.

It was a red and soft rondure, kind of warm to the touch, even soggy with his own saliva. Tetsurou frowned, confused, and he leaned over it to smell it, because he would have sworn it smelled like…

Yes, like a flower.

What the fuck.

“What happens?”, Kenma asked, turning again to look, and Tetsurou quickly hid the red thing inside the pocket on the sports shorts he used to sleep at Kenma’s place. He narrowed his eyes, but ended up going back to his game, and Tetsurou did basically the same, lying down beside the boy and passing his arms around him.

“Don’t… It’s hot”, Kenma complained, so he squeezed him harder.

 

 

He knew it wasn’t a _thing_. He knew it was a petal.

 

 

Everything smelled like a garden in the cafeteria, and Tetsurou was afraid the food tasted like it too. He sniffed a little bit over the rice before taking it to his mouth, but… nothing weird: it still tasted like plastic, like every other plate on the cafeteria menu.

“What are you doing?”, Bokuto asked, mouth full of rice.

“Did you put something on my food again?”

“What? No! That was only once!”

“So you _finally_ confess.”

“Oh. Uh.”

It was easy to catch him on a lie. First, because they were ultimately stupid, and then, because after a few days he just forgot about the original excuse and ended up making up another one to cover himself. However, Tetsurou didn’t mind, because Bokuto never intended bad with them. In fact, most of them were white lies or jokes he forgot he had made. Bokuto pointed at him with his chopsticks, one eyebrow raised:

“Yeah, well, I once put toothpaste in your hummus. But you liked it!”

“What about flowers?”

“Flowers?”, he laughed with all his body, “And where would I have picked a flower from?”

That wasn’t the point at all. Sometimes talking to Bokuto was… really hard. He supposed that was part of his charm, the fact that you’d never know what was going to come out through his lips, and most of the days Tetsurou was amazed by this.

“What’s with that face?”

Oikawa sat by his side, with his eternal but fake calm and his never-ending smirk. He never said hi (like always), and he started to pick up the greens Bokuto didn’t want to eat directly from his plate. Bokuto was always torn between the instinct of not letting his food go and the logical solution of giving it to the setter. Tetsurou smiled at his pouting.

“Kuroo thinks I’ve put flowers on his food.”

“Did you?”

“No! Did _you_?”

Oikawa laughed shortly before answering:

“I’m not into those…”

“The toothpaste was your idea.”

“ _Bokuto_!”, he shrieked, taking his free hand to the chest and pretending to be highly offended, “That’s treachery!”

Tetsurou wasn’t impressed by the revelation. He knew Oikawa was more childish than what he liked to pretend, and bit by bit the setter was putting his mask aside and being more and more the Oikawa that Tetsurou had been told he was. He didn’t even know how the setter had ended up going with them everywhere and just being part of the super Nationals duo that Bokuto and Tetsurou had been all along, since high school. Now they weren’t a duo anymore, but he liked it. He liked Oikawa.

But he didn’t know if Oikawa liked them too or if he just missed being part of something.

“Well”, the setter started, still glaring at Bokuto, “And why do you think Bokuto has put flowers into you food?”

“Yes!”, he grinned, pointing at Tetsurou again with the chopsticks. “Do you have any evidence?”

“In fact…”

“Wow!”

“Man, you actually did it!”

“I did not!”

He couldn’t help laughing while rummaging in his pocket, shaking his head and faking to be really tired of their attitude. Nothing further from reality, and when he put the petal on the table both of them bent over it to watch it up close. There was rice all around Bokuto’s mouth that fell back onto his plate, but nothing more. There wasn’t any recognition in his face, and neither on Oikawa’s brown eyes.

“Did you vomit this?”, Bokuto asked.

“That’s a petal”, the other one added.

“I know it’s a petal! And yes, I coughed and…”

“Oh.”

Oikawa was no longer looking at the petal, but at him. He expected a smirk from him, or a nasty comment and, in fact, he got the smirk… however, the question that dripped from his lips sounded like words that had been used at a time too far from now: slow but firm.

“Are you in love, Kuroo?”

“You know I am”, he answered, too fast, too confused.

Bokuto didn’t say anything about it because, despite of what people might think about him, he knew how to read people and when to stop (or never start) teasing. And _yes_ , maybe the ace wasn’t exactly a genius, not in academics, but his emotional intelligence exceeded expectations. Tetsurou knew Akaashi would disagree… but Bokuto’s love-blindness was another completely different topic.

“Do you know what the hana…?”

He wanted to listen. His body, however, had its own plans, and broke in several coughs. They left him some space and Oikawa even patted his back and there it was again, the lump. Now it was everywhere, from his chest to his throat to his tongue and he wanted it _gone_. The smell of grass was so intense it was almost nauseating and Tetsurou definitely didn’t need it right now. Especially after feeling the velvet texture of more petals in his mouth.

Tetsurou didn’t want to spit them in front of them… not until Bokuto slid a napkin to him, eyebrows raised in what some people would call a menacing gesture.

The petals were furiously red and impossibly light, very different from the thick and suspicious roses he had observed that morning while walking to uni. He looked up to Bokuto, expecting maybe a guilty look in his golden eyes… there wasn’t any guilt in them, just concern. It was identical in Oikawa’s:

“Hanahaki”, he sentenced.

“Isn’t it an urban legend?”, Bokuto asked, frowning deeply.

“No”, the setter replied, shaking his head. “My mother almost died of it.”

“I hope it’s not hereditary…”

“ _Of course_ it’s not”

Tetsurou let them talk, thinking about it. He knew about the existence of a disease that made your body generate flowers due to one-sided love, its roots growing deep in the lungs. He knew, too, what he was doing the exact moment he heard about it the first time: drawing. He was drawing a cute cat while in the kitchen, his mother cooking something that smelled tasty (and that’s why he had decided to move there with his crayons and his deformed cat), when the news started talking about this hanahaki disease. “Poor girl”, his mother had said, and Tetsurou had looked at her:

“Why?”

“She didn’t want to get cured.”

“That’s stupid!”, he had shout, giggling.

“Love is stupid.”

Her mother wasn’t giggling, and neither were Bokuto nor Oikawa. They were far from doing it, actually, and Tetsurou forced a smile and rolled his eyes:

“Oh, c’mon, guys. I don’t have the hanahaki, I’m with Kenma.”

“Yeah, but you always said… what was it, something about the heart not being just for one person?”

“That was a joke, Bokuto!”

“Are you falling in love with someone else?”, Oikawa added, smoothly raising his eyebrows in a move that said it all.

“No!”

They looked at each other. Tetsurou wished murder was legal in Japan.

“Can you get the hanahaki if you like two people and one likes you in return but the other doesn’t?”, Bokuto asked.

“I’m not a scientist, you know”

“Stop. Stop!  I don’t… I like Kenma, ok? This is not the hanahak…”

Oikawa interrupted him, talking directly to Bokuto:

“Maybe he likes our manager. I think she’s cute.”

“CUTE?”, the guy echoed, clearly offended, and the setter laughed out loud. “She was the former Karasuno manager, and she wasn’t the cute one, she was the gorgeous one! You should remember her better than us!”

“I don’t really pay attention to team managers…”

“You don’t really pay attention to girls, Oikawa.”

Tetsurou was about to _scream_ when he understood. Oh. They were trying to distract him. He wondered when those two had bonded together so close to throw a tactic like that without even agreeing on doing it first. He ended up smiling, without daring to touch the new petals on the napkin yet.

It was impossible for the hanahaki to affect him, Tetsurou was sure about this. Kenma and him were in a long and healthy relationship of five years, and they loved each other maybe not with passion, but with honesty.

But when he thought about him he always did it in shades of red, because all the best memories were related to Nekoma’s uniform. And the petals were red. And her mother told him once the hanahaki flowers had some kind of meaning… Tetsurou shook his head, trying to keep away that memory.

“Well, I suppose I’ll just wait to see what happens… and if I get worse I’ll go to the uni doctor and she will tell me what’s wrong with me better than you two.”

“Fair point”, Oikawa nodded, and Bokuto mirrored him.

 

 

The petals were losing color.

At least, that’s what he thought the first seconds after vomiting them all over Kenma’s sink, because the petals were tinted with more red and the iron stink of his blood was hidden under the floral scent of the plants growing inside him. Well, _if_ there was any flower growing, of course. Could you get the hanahaki by mistake?

“You should go to the doctor”, the voice said after him, and Tetsurou jumped, hiding the petals under his hands. But he shouldn’t be worried, because Kenma didn’t even raise his eyes from the screen of his PSP to follow him to the bathroom. He just looked at him quickly, almost without really meaning it, and with no more words he turned around and left.

When he looked back at the sink, the faded red lines had other meaning, and he finally understood.

 _Fuck_ , he thought. _That’s blood_.

 

 

The university doctor was cold but pretty, and her brown eyes were going up and down over the x-ray sheet between her hands. There was no surprise on them, either, because over the table there was a handful of red petals tainted here and there with dried blood.

She didn’t say anything different from what he had read on the Wikipedia, but that didn’t make it better… quite the opposite, actually. Black marks over his white lungs and ribs on the x-ray sheet: stems and leaves and petals. It was real, it was there, just in front of his own eyes.

“The infection can be removed through surgery”, she told him, all professional. “But the feelings disappear along with the petals. It can be cured without side effects, too, though only when the feelings are returned.”

Tetsurou let out a brief and confused giggle. The doctor didn’t even raise her eyebrows… she must be used to diagnose students with the hanahaki disease, because it wasn’t exactly rare, just… uncommon. There had been deaths, of course, as the hanahaki also had this psychological side effect where the person didn’t want to _stop being in love_. They preferred to die.

( _Love is stupid_ , his mother had said.)

“But”, he started, voice calmer than it felt. “I don’t… I mean, I have a boyfriend, my feelings are _already_ being returned.”

She blinked:

“Kuroo Tetsurou, isn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“Let’s put our next appointment on the 31st, ok? Until then, I suggest you to stop and think about the people you are surrounded with, especially the ones you’ve met during this first year. Think about your feelings, about what is happening in your life and why, and then confess them.”

“Confess? I told him five years ago!”

A cutting look and he shut up:

“The 31st I’ll have everything ready for the surgery, in case you decide not to go that way. You know the rules. If you’re not here by 13:00 that day we will call your parents to bring you themselves.”

“You can’t force me to get the surgery.”

“Oh, so you want to die?”

 _At least_ , he thought, _death smelled nice_.

 

 

So he was in love, uh?

He was in love and he had one week to discover who the person was. Of course, every time he thought about it he ended up thinking about Kenma, but there had to be something… someone else. Like the doctor had said, someone _new_.

He didn’t really want to know who he or she was. He wanted to go to the hospital the 31st, get the flowers out of him, and not to think about this entire nightmare ever again. And. Kenma. Please. He didn’t want him to realize what was going on. He couldn’t even go to his home now, look at him in the eyes and pretend he hadn’t change.

He was _in love_ with someone else, for fucks sake.

But the worst part was being sure that, even if he told Kenma what was happening inside him, he wouldn’t say anything. He never said anything.

So he had to know. He had _to know_.

Kiyoko Shimizu, the team manager, was discarded almost at the same time he remembered Bokuto saying her name. Yes, she was stunning _and_ his type (silent but sharp), and he definitely could see himself falling in love with her… but when she smiled at him the killer flowers rooting in his chest didn’t blossom the way they did when hearing someone talking about Kenma’s favorite game on the train.

Maybe her friend…? The blonde one that was best friend’s with Shoyo? She came to visit occasionally, and every time Tetsurou looked at her something as warm as the sun made him feel better. And he would have sworn that was love until he looked around him and saw how each one of the people on the gym was looking at her with the same stupid grin on their faces, especially Bokuto.

Ah, Bokuto.

What if…?

The ace asked for a toss, and Tetsurou raised his eyes to watch him go. He should be used to it, to the impact sound against the ball, so ( _so_ ) hard that sometimes he thought its echo would break his bones; but he wasn’t at all. Bokuto was a force of nature trying to break free from flesh and teeth and victorious screams, and maybe that was exactly the thing that put them together four years ago. They were opposite in looks, forces and personality, but somehow managed to find common ground for their friendship to grow.

And what a friendship! Legendary (that’s what Bokuto would say)! And, since they were in the same university, now they weren’t only legendary, but also inseparable.

Maybe his type was the best-friends type. It made sense… somehow. Maybe he couldn’t even have a crush on someone without being this someone his ultimate best friend! So, would it mean that every time he made a new one he had to be careful not to fall in love? He couldn't be bothered.

“Kuroo! Have you seen that?”

Tetsurou narrowed his eyes, looking at Bokuto. Was he in love?

“Bro! Eh! Have you seen that straight?”

Was he in love with…?

“Yo!”

“Yes, for fucks sakes, Bokuto, I’ve seen it!”

No, he wasn’t in love with him. Bokuto was amazing, and he would gladly (well, maybe not gladly) die for him; but he was pretty sure he wasn’t dying _because of_ him right now.

Realizing his best friend was still just his best friend shot him hard but warm, and Tetsurou smiled at him there, in the middle of the practice match, Bokuto still looking at him with his typical raised eyebrow.

“What?”

He took a mouthful of air to answer, but his lungs (those he now was sharing with the flowers) didn’t obey. In its place there was only the smell of grass and his throat blocked by red, red, red. There was red on the floor, on his hands, on his teeth. He even _felt_ red. The petals were choking him in sap and sweet scent, and he didn’t know when his legs lost the fight and ended up on the wooden floors, his entire body aching cough after cough, trembling in fear and pain. Fuck, was he gonna die so soon?

He could hear the screams and the voice of their coach over the serrated sound of his throat. Was it raw already? It felt like it.

When the cough stopped the whole world seemed to stop too. Too many eyes on him. Bokuto was quiet for once.

In front of him, flowers.

Not petals: _flowers_.

Whole and round and beautiful and as red as the blood in which they were almost floating.

“Let him breath!”, Bokuto shout, and he felt the rush of air made by the bodies moving.

He, however, didn’t move. Oikawa didn’t move.

“Those are poppies”, he whispered, an uneasy tone in his usually cheerful voice.

Tetsurou dragged the flowers to make a little pile between his hands. Yes, they were poppies.

“And what does a poppy mean?”, he asked.

“Sorry for your loss.”

 

 

What loss?

 

 

Oikawa didn’t have exactly a kind personality, but somehow he made everyone around him forget that tiny detail. He did it with smiles and laughs and offering you the victory in tray, and he was bright in a dark way, like realizing how dangerous a shark was and being infinitely grateful for not living on the sea. Oikawa was the sea, the shark and the relief, and that’s why they called him King.

And, like it happened with any monster in existence, you were only safe if you were part of its pack.

Tetsurou was part of it, at least while in university.

Now they were at the nurse’s office and Tetsurou was trying to get some rest before going back home. Oikawa was by his side (coach’s order), fiddling with the poppy he had collected before. The red color tainted his fingers, but he didn’t seem to care.

Silence.

“What day do you have the surgery?”

“Next week.”

“Have you already found out who your sweetheart is?”

The prettiest face, the ugliest character.

Tetsurou wrinkled his nose and tried to answer with a snarky remark, but all his energy was gone, only finding inside an uncomfortable urge to be honest with him:

“No, I’m… I’m completely lost.”

“Are you sure?”

Oh. Oh!

“You know it!”

Oikawa smirked, settling himself down by his side and rotating the poppy stem between his fingers. When he looked at him Tetsurou thought that maybe (maybe) the setter was the most attractive guy he had met in his life. It was the way he moved, the way he raised his jaw in a pride gesture when playing, white straight teeth and sarcastic brown eyes.

“Kuroo, everyone knows it but you.”

But his voice sounded oddly miserable, and maybe Tetsurou wasn’t the only one that had betrayed a loved one. He looked nice with a poppy between his fingers, looking at him under his thick eyelashes. Not as nice as Kenma doing anything remotely cute, but, well. Flowers don’t lie, and he was full of them.

“So it’s… it is you.”

Oikawa blinked in confusion:

“What?” and then, “No!”

He frowned, the setter pointing at him with the flower and with an offended expression on his face. Tetsurou was more and more confused second after second.

“I’m not a boring and ugly poppy, you idiot”, Oikawa snapped, poisonous. “I’m… well, I don’t know what I would be, but definitely not this thing.”

“What? What were you talking about then?”

“You know what”, he kept talking, “I’ll ask Iwa. He should know better than me… probably I’m something _blue_.”

Oikawa must have seen something on his face, because he stopped talking instantly and turned to him, face all serious. He left the poppy over the bed sheets they were both seated on, just between them:

“Poppies mean different things here than on the West. Here, they mean love, almost like every other red flower… but in the West they are used for remembering the fallen of wars, wishing peace in death and, sometimes, recovery. It’s a sad flower, but it’s full of hope, too.”

“I don’t… get it. I haven’t lost anyone.”

He was so tired of not understanding anything. He felt frustrated, and idiotic, and lost. And Oikawa’s riddles weren’t helping him.

“Who do you love?”

“Kenma”, he answered, not even stopping to think about it.

Oikawa didn’t need to say anything else either. Kenma. Kenma. Sorry for your loss. Kenma and the color red. Kenma and his silence. Kenma was the only person he was in love with, and he had been since he could remember. The hanahaki was red, and it was crowning him a fallen in battle. “And, sometimes, recovery”, Oikawa had said.

“Kenma”, he repeated.

 _Kenma doesn’t love me anymore_.

 

 

“Iwa says I’m a thistle, what a prick!”, Oikawa shrieked, and Tetsurou knew it was an attempt to make him laugh, but… well. At least Bokuto did it.

 

 

He couldn’t breathe enough to fill his lungs, so his chest was up and down at maximum speed. Tetsurou could feel the stems interwoven between his ribs, making a nest inside his lungs, the flowers blossoming every time he thought about it. _Kenma doesn’t love me anymore_. Another flower. _Kenma doesn’t love me anymore_. Another poppy. Maybe he was more of a plant than a human at this moment.

And it was so hot, so hot outside.

Kenma didn’t notice that something was off, and neither did Shoyo. The boy came to visit again (and again and again), his boyfriend looking at him and smiling. How many times had Kenma smiled at him in five years? Not as many as Shoyo could get in just one afternoon. Tetsurou wondered… was he the reason? The little redhead?

Shoyo dragged them to another blocking practice, a sun in miniature.

His chest hurt, and every time the cough attacked Tetsurou managed to swallow down the flowers, choking on them, keep playing. Why was he doing it? Shoyo looked at him with cautious adoration.

He wasn’t angry. Just sad.

So when the afternoon sun tainted the city in gold he turned to the boy, gathering strength to smile at him and say:

“Don’t you need to go to the bullet train, Shoyo?”

“Oh!” he blinked, alarmed. “Yes! Yes, I’ll go to take my things!”

Kenma took a step to follow him inside, but he seemed to think twice about it, and raised his gaze to him instead:

“You look sick.”

“I _am_ sick.”

There was a little silence and it hurt. Everything hurt. Breathing, standing still, looking at him, feeling. Even thinking hurt. Kenma looked away for a moment before:

“Is something wrong?”

Tetsurou knew that he needed to be calm. Calm and collected, and logical. Stuff like that happened every day, people fall in and out of love constantly, it wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t a tragedy. But it was for him, because they knew each other since they were kids and he thought nothing would change. _Forever_ had made sense with him.

“Since when?”, Tetsurou asked slowly.

“Since when what?”

He just extended his arm and pointed to the place where Shoyo had disappeared. Kenma blinked one, two times, and then he ducked his head.

“I don’t like him, you know.”

“But you don’t like me either.”

Kenma opened his mouth to retort, but Tetsurou was faster. He didn’t want to make a scene (he was calm, collected, logical), he didn’t want to, at all. However, his hands failed him, and he ended up throwing to his feet the flowers and petals he had wanted to show him, like a holy offering. For a moment there were only red drops floating between them. Kenma was beautiful. And clever in a way Tetsurou could never imitate, so he understood. Kenma understood instantly.

“Oh.”

Yeah, well, Tetsurou could say the same.

“Did you know it? That you no longer…?”

 “I wasn’t sure”, he answered, and his voice was low and weak.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why you didn’t let me _fight_?”

“I… I didn’t know how to.”

Tetsurou wasn’t the only one suffering there. Kenma was firm and tense, a little soldier, but his shoulders were trembling. He also wouldn’t look him in the eyes, and that was… fine. Tetsurou was used to it.

“Since when?”, he repeated.

“Months.”

“ _Months?_ ”

He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. Months.

“And what was your plan?”

“My plan?”

“Yes, did you…? Did you think I’d fall out of love too? Or… I don’t know, Kenma, fuck. I got the hanahaki. I’m _dying_ ”, he didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. He felt the words foreign on his tongue, incoherent. Kenma kept looking at the grass. “I’m dying because you don’t love me anymore.”

Those last words sounded familiar now.

Finally, Kenma raised his eyes to him, and _god_ how he loved him. He loved the black and gold of his hair, the long silences, the comfort resulting of knowing someone for too long that you don’t know where your own body ends and where the other starts. And the more he loved, the more the poppies bloomed inside him.

“I was hoping for them to return”, he said. “The feelings. But…”

Kenma never finished that sentence, and Tetsurou took a deep breath. So that was it. The end. Both of them pretended there was no tears on their faces when Shoyo came back, and the little redhead was wise enough to not to say anything.

They didn’t say anything else, either.

 

 

Tetsurou decided to wait until the 31st instead of advancing the date of the surgery. He knew it was one of the side effects (hoping for the best), but he wanted to… he wanted to remember it clearly: the heartbreak, the desperation, the disbelief. He thought a relationship like that deserved an end to match it up.

It was a long week, and Kenma did his best to leave him alone. Tetsurou kept hearing him by accident, however, as their bedrooms were still side by side. If he tried he could even hear the music of the videogame Tetsurou had bought for him a few days ago.

He hadn’t even got to say him that he loved him, not even once.

He missed him.

 

 

On the 31st, his mother hold him close before letting him enter the operating room and told him she loved him. At this point, his lungs were infested by flowers, and he couldn’t eat without choking on them. He felt weak, but he knew the recovery would be fast, and he was kind of looking forward to it. He also wanted to die. _Side effects_ , he said to himself.

Tetsurou looked at the last poppy on the palm of his hand and thought about him.

 

 

Summer at its peak felt like honey sliding on his back. It was dense, sticky and kind of humid, and Tetsurou had started to like it now that he could breathe again. Without the flowers, the reek of sweat and ice-cream were a repulsive mix on the streets, but he secretly liked it, because it meant he was no longer dying.

Tetsurou went out on the balcony of his room, the sun burning furiously in that endless summer afternoon, not even a light breeze that would take away the song of the cicadas. He felt calm. Nothing but calm.

When Kenma went outside too, Tetsurou closed his eyes, getting ready to it. He heard him lean against the railing. The silence lasted an entire life, the one they could had lived together.

And when Tetsurou opened his eyes to look at him, everything was fine.

It wasn’t a cold reunion. After all, Kenma would always be Kenma for him. In love or out of it, he was still his best friend, and Tetsurou didn’t need any flower to tell him so.

Kenma reached out his hand and laced his fingers with his, Tetsurou gave him a little squeeze. Nothing hurt.

“I love you.”

He had finally said it. They smiled.

“I love you too.”

And everything was fine.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I've been thinking about this fic for a long long time and finally decided to write it! I know it's not a common hanahaki disease, but I liked the idea of playing with it...
> 
> This fic wouldn't have been possible without [Marya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marya) who corrected my horrible spanglish til transforming it into sleek and correct English. She even helped with the title.
> 
>  
> 
> [Wanna chat?](http://lunnvic.tumblr.com/)


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